Learn Nothing Day

Shhhhh.... don't scare him.

photos by Holly Dodd
Almogordo, 2009

"Try not to learn"

I was once asked:

Since unschooling is a lifestyle, how can a family wanting to embrace these ideals begin the process? What encouragement would you offer?

Part of my 1998 response:

Play. Joke. Sing. Instead of turning inward and looking for the answer within the family, within the self, turn it all inside out. Get out of the house. Go somewhere you've never been, even a city park you're unfamiliar with, or a construction site, or a different grocery store. Try just being calm and happy together. For some families, that's simple. For others it's a frightening thought.

Try not to learn. Don't try to learn. Those two aren't the same thing but they're close enough for beginners. If you see something *educational* don't say a word. Practice letting exciting opportunities go by, or at least letting the kids get the first word about something interesting you're all seeing.

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The "Try not to learn" idea inspired Learn Nothing Day ten years afterwards (and 18 years ago, now).

SandraDodd.com/interview
photo by Holly Dodd

in French

Choosing something better

Sometimes I want to whine. Sometimes I do.

It never helps.

When making a conscious decision about how to respond or how to react, it will be rare that whining would be the best choice.

SandraDodd.com/betterchoice
photo by Holly Dodd
on window-installation day

One seamless whole

Tina Bragdon wrote:

More and more I am beginning to understand what you say about the power of our words, the semantics of them, and what they reveal about our thoughts deep down. I used to think long ago this was a bit nitpicky, but really can see what you mean when I really stop and think about it.

I think that awareness (for me anyway) is easier to come by with some of our loaded words like "lazy", "she-he always/never.." and such, but most of us weren't homeschooled let alone unschooled and as such don't realize the impact of being graded, sorted, and categorized from the age of 2-3 or so (ie-being regarded as "toddler", preschooler" and so on).

The more I take the word "teach" out of my vocabulary and am conscious of it the better it is for me and the easier it is to see my children's lives as one seamless whole and not divided by subjects.

—Tina Bragdon

The School in my Head

Mindful of Words

SandraDodd.com/subjects
photo by Holly Dodd

Imagine that

The richness of that environment of learning, where the parents and the children are exploring what they want to explore and sharing little bits along the way, sliding in and out of each others' hobbies, it is so big, it's so rich, and when the children are old enough to get jobs—mine all got jobs as teens, but in some countries that’s not as legal as it is where I am—and when they decide to move out, it’s so smooth, it’s so normal. It already seems not unusual that a child would move out, would find a cool opportunity and move out, and that the parents would help them willingly, sweetly.

And I’ve seen that now dozens of times, and I assume I will see that hundreds of times before I'm through, and most people have not seen that one time. They can’t imagine it; they don’t believe it. What they see is: when the child turns 18, everything changes.

I’ve talked to kids who said they were so scared and stressed when they were 17, because they knew when they turned 18, their parents were going to start charging them rent, or throw them out, or if they didn’t go to the university, they should go to the military—all this huge pressure to get... to get out. You are done now; we're done.

So people hadn’t considered that they could totally avoid that, that that would be a natural offshoot of radical unschooling.

I was speaking, not writing.
You can hear and read more here:
Family Bonding
photo by Holly Dodd

Choosing fruit

Bernadette Lynn wrote:

My son isn't restricted in what he eats. He came into the kitchen yesterday to ask me if there were any biscuits (cookies), but stopped mid-sentence when he noticed a melon on the counter and asked for that instead. So he ate a whole honeydew melon, instead of biscuits (which we did have). It's the second one he's eaten since I bought them at the weekend.

The melon was sitting next to his uneaten Easter egg, but he ignored that.

—Bernadette Lynn

SandraDodd.com/eating/sweets
photo of Holly Dodd by Trevor Parker,
text added by Holly later

Out of order

The past few days have been glitchy, but I was calm, from years of practice.

Yesterday's post was lacking a link to something I think you might enjoy. My question and the beginning of the response are here, and it should link to the rest (but scroll up, there):

Sandra: why does freeze frame sound like the Ramones or Devo ChatGPT: If by "Freeze-Frame" you mean the 1981 hit by The J. Geils Band, I can hear why it might remind you of both Ramones and Devo, even though it isn't really either one. A few things overlap:...

If I had a graph of the order in which I've learned different kinds of music, it would seem glitchy, too. I'm still figuring out lots of things I missed while I was more involved in traditional music, English ballads, madrigals, and medieval and Renaissance Christmas music. Some of that was singular, or duets. Some was leading groups of people. Keith and I spent years immersed in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and weren't paying much attention to what was new and current.

Keith was in high school, listening to The J. Geils Band, The Doobie Brothers, Steppenwolf and Jethro Tull, while I was at the University of New Mexico, playing in the first iteration of their early music program (then called "The Keller Consort"). I listened to albums, but not much radio. I was "studying" Elton John, Cat Stevens, and Joni Mitchell.

Keith and I have been a couple for over 45 years and have done vocal and instrumental music together, and shared each others' old favorite music. He didn't know anything about Donovan, and I think he knew Paul McCartney and Wings better than he knew The Beatles. I couldn't tell Steely Dan from The Doobie Brothers.

It still works if things are learned out of order. When I was little, I could read music before I could read words. Music is in and around me.

I'm still curious, and I'm still learning.

SandraDodd.com/connections
photo by Holly Dodd

P.S. Keith still goes to SCA events and does music. I wandered off.

Every area of life

Janine Davies, responding to this quote:

Unschooling can make life better. Really, fully unschooling becomes more philosophical and spiritual than people expect it to.

—Sandra Dodd

I have acknowledged my experience of this before now when I first really 'got' and fully applied radical unschooling, and now with each day, month, year, this becomes stronger and stronger in my experience.

It's exhilarating to me, the transformative power of unschooling. It is the thing that has finally drained negativity out of my life and pushed me daily further and further away from it, and further and further towards positivity in every area of my life.

—Janine Davies

SandraDodd.com/positivity
photo by Holly Dodd

Math from My Little Pony

Dr. Christine Alvarado, a science professor at UC San Diego, on how playing with My Little Ponies moved her toward math and engineering:

When I started, I took the hair on the Pony's tail and divided it into three pieces for braiding. Soon I became bored with a single braid. I then divided the tail into nine pieces and made three groups. I braided each group of three until I had three braids, then took these three braids and braided them together.

Soon I was up to starting with twenty-seven pieces (nested down to nine braids, then to three and then one) and then on to eighty-one. All the while I was learning about math: I saw that division is the process of taking a large number of things and grouping them into a smaller number of groups. In order to end up with one even braid at the end, I had to be able to divide the initial number evenly by three, then by three, and then by three again, until I ended up with just one braid.

The day after that page was made, I took a photo of some of my daughter's ponies, to use as an illustration at an announcement post, Sleep, Teens, My Little Pony & Science.

Holly, 18, had been away from the house. She came in and saw the ponies out, so I showed her the photo and read her a bit of the Christine Alvarado article. Holly got another pony to show me, told me about the plan of the braids and the angles to get them to cross and stay crossed, and what could be done with those braids, but that she usually twists them into a bun, and had left some unbraided hair out at the bottom of the mane to fasten that bun up with.

I couldn't even keep up with the explanation. Just sayin'... 🙂

There's more of what Christine Alvarado wrote here:
SandraDodd.com/mylittlepony
photos by Sandra Dodd, but Holly did all the braiding

Changing Gears

Deschooling is like changing gears. Go slowly. Go deliberately. SandraDodd.com/gradualchange Don't goof around. Don't stall. SandraDodd.com/doit How can both be true? The clutch and the gas.

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photo by Sandra Dodd, of
coloring by Holly Dodd, years ago, and
light switch plate by Sandra, years ago

Safer safety

Mary Ellen (nellebelle) wrote, to a reporter:

I am writing as a parent who believes that the risk of my child being harmed by using the Internet is overblown.

Children are far more at risk from sexual predation by people known to the family than by strangers they meet on the Internet. Even if a predator does manage to contact a child via email or chatting, a lot would have to happen for that contact to lead to a physical meeting. Limiting children's use of the Internet is based on fear mongering and gives parents a false sense of security.

I monitor my children's Internet use by spending time with them while they are on-line. I encourage them to show me web sites they like to visit and how they use them. I show them web sites that I think they might enjoy. We speak about safety issues on an ongoing basis, just as we discuss safety in other areas of our lives.

—Mary Ellen (nellebelle)

SandraDodd.com/onlinesafety
photo by Holly Dodd

Courage (and real encouragement)

Changing and learning to be unschooling parents is a slow and gradual business, and there might be people trying to discourage you.

I saved these actual public comments; I hope you've never had any aimed at you.

• Some people take unschooling much too seriously.


• There really is no good definition of unschooling, you know.


• Whatever unschooling is for you, that's unschooling!


• Don't listen to those unschoolers.

There are many more, mostly of the "You are an amazing mom!" sort, at What support is and isn't. Don't read too much there. 🙂

If you're not feeling confident and would like some encouraging suggestions, maybe poke around this blog and follow some links to real encouragement and good ideas.

Click "view online" from an e-mail, to get to the randomizer. From phones, the randomizer is below; on computers, it's up to the right.

SandraDodd.com/help
photo by Holly Dodd

Choosing, many times

Note from a discussion in February 2012:

"I totally understand the idea behind radical unschooling, that children will self regulate...."

It surprises me every time someone assures others that they COMPLETELY and absolutely understand that... and then make a statement that came from somewhere else. "Self-regulate" means "eventually do what the mom wanted, spontaneously," sometimes, and other times means that the child will begin to have "self control" and tell himself no. A lot.

It's much clearer to think of a child having choices, and making what seems like the best one, many times a day; many times an hour, sometimes. A kid surrounded by cows and mesquite might not want to go out there, again, just to go. A kid who lives in a cornfield isn't likely to run excitedly out to see that... again.

Marty's off at a park in armor, where he's gone most Sundays for five or six years (and half the Sundays of his life before that). Holly was out and about most of yesterday. They chose to be out. They weren't out because their mom told them it was better than a Wii.

—Sandra Dodd

SandraDodd.com/self-regulation
photo by Sandra Dodd, of Bardolf (Marty)

The red belt in the photo meant he was a squire. Now his belt is white (for knighthood), and he has been Baron of al-Barran, King of the Outlands, and Prince of Oertha. That will mean something or nothing, depending who's reading; that's fine.

Quiet antiques

Look around you for simple bits of older art, technology and history. See and appreciate these quiet antiques.

SandraDodd.com/curiosity
photo by Holly Dodd
of a wrought-iron gate
in India

Normal reactions

It turns out that much of what is considered "normal teen behavior" is a normal reaction to many years of school, and to being controlled and treated as children and school kids and students rather than as full, thoughtful human beings.

---

I wrote that, but the source is missing.
I also wrote what's below, and its parent page is linked.

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I didn’t know that our relationships could stay so good even when they were teenagers.

My original expectation was that when they were teens they would be frustrated and rebellious and wild, because I thought that was hormonally inevitable.

A side benefit of having been partners rather than adversaries was that the “normal teen behavior” turned out not to have been “natural,” and in contrast to what I was seeing in unschooled teens, it started to look like very sensible reactions to a barrage of arbitrary rules and limitations. The communications and trust continued to build within our family, rather than to erode over the years.

Unexpected Benefits of Unschooling
SandraDodd.com/unexpectedarticle
photo by Sandra Dodd
of Marty, Holly and Kirby
when they were still at home

Big world

Here is a peacock in India. Hema Bharadwaj took the photo:


This peacock lives wherever it wants to, in Albuquerque, and was photographed by Holly Dodd. Where it wants to live is wandering around the zoo. 🙂


Below is a picture I took of Holly and another zoo peacock in 2009.

click for more just-add-light-and-stir peacock images
What do you know about peacocks? What do you need to know? Does what you know touch geography? Art, biology, or animal behavior? History, mythology or fashion?

You probably don't "need" to know anything about peacocks, really, but I bet you already knew several things.


peacock images out on the net

Friendly, calm and welcoming

Sandra Dodd, May 6, 2008, from a conference follow-up question:

Won't they end up lazy?
Do they expect other people to make their life good?

We visited our oldest son, Kirby, last weekend. We met nine of his regular guys. His friends and co-workers and his roommate really, really like him. Today I helped him format a resume, to get it all on one page. Twenty-one and his resume was two pages. Here's something he wrote:

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Active Imagination, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Retail floor operator, Summer 2000 — 04/11/05

Constantly advanced the sales quota while upholding a friendly, calm and welcoming atmosphere in the store.

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He did! He's good at creating and maintaining a friendly, calm and welcoming atmosphere. No one who knew him when he was five or younger would ever have predicted that.

More at SandraDodd.com/hena08/lazy
photo by Holly Dodd

In fun ways for real reasons

From a 2003 article, "Some Thoughts on Homeschooling," by Sandra Dodd

My children learned to read without phonics lessons, without programmed readers, and without pressure. Kirby had two and a half lessons, and that cured me of doubt. I had taught reading, years before, and laying those two experiences side by side made me aware of the damage that whole mindset does. So I read to him, played word games with him, sang with him, watched movies with him, bought him video games and magazines to go with them, and from Nintendo gaming guides and magazines, he learned to read fluently when he was nine.

My other two read at ten and eleven. I was more relaxed, and though I was surprised that Holly read "late" (for a girl, I thought, unfairly), a year ago she wasn't reading and now she reads very well. It comes almost suddenly, once they "get it," and I'm convinced that it comes suddenly at school too, but teachers who want job security and paychecks disguise the process with years of exercises and read-alouds and worksheets until those loom large and the child is lost within. At some point a child either reads fluently or has given up trying.

Because my children learned to read without having been taught, they have no doubt whatsoever that they could learn anything else. Few things are as important or as complex as reading, yet they figured it out and enjoyed doing it. If I thought I had taught them, they too would think I taught them, and they would be waiting for me to teach them something else.

They have never been criticized for "not showing their work" when they do calculations in their heads. Mathematics, too, they have learned in fun ways for real reasons.

—Sandra Dodd, 2003
(Holly has read well for over 20 years)

SandraDodd.com/thoughts
photo by Denaire Nixon

I shouldn't have been surprised.

Parts of a longer, fast-paced story of twelve-year-old Holly Dodd, who asked me this:

"Will you read me the whole Bible?"

"Sure. Now? I think I have one right in here." I did. I asked if I should start with the best parts or just start at the beginning.

She ignored that, and said "Are you going to trick me and read Lord of the Rings?"

"Don't you think you would know the difference?"

"I don't know." . . . .
(more commentary ensued)
She might or might not come back for more, but she made more intelligent comments and asked more questions that actually meant something than some people would be willing to ask in a year of Sunday School. And she made connections with Lord of the Rings, homeschooling, language, journalistic integrity, Strongbad, poetry and the Wizard of Oz.

Holly and the Bible
The image used to be on the Metropolitan Museum of Art site, and linked on my page, but they let theirs slide away. I lifted a copy from the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive. The artist wasn't identified, but the subject is Toah, an ancestor of the prophet Samuel.

Temporary Christmas

"Temporary Christmas..."—aren't they all?

Temporarily we can see fun. We can share thoughts.

Allow joy to flow, when you can do that.

SandraDodd.com/joy2
photos by Holly Dodd, who also oversaw the project, with young nieces, on an oddly warm day